Sunday, August 9, 2009

Raider fans love history, and we love looking back at the great players who have worn the Silver & Black through the years. It's become an even more popular pastime as we've suffered through record-breaking futility in recent years, and history always provides a handy comeback for Charger fans who troll the Raider blogs.

Side note: I've still never met a Charger fan face-to-face, the closest being our own Dobolina, who sort of had a curiosity about them growing up, and Unk, who never could muster enough emotion about them to hate them like he hated the Steelers, Chiefs, Broncos, and even the Seahawks.

Today Monte Poole weighs in with his list of the 50 greatest Raiders players of all time. Our four loyal readers will know exactly where my eyes first went on that list. And I'm pleased to agree with Monte, who puts Lester Hayes at #8. That ranks him ahead of Hall of Fame hopefuls Stabler, Branch, and Guy, and ahead of Hall of FamersBlanda, Casper, Howie Long, Marcus Allen, and Mike Haynes.

Why isn't Lester in the Hall of Fame? I've registered my guess here in the past. But I would love to hear it straight from the committee's often breathed-through mouth at some stage.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, there's a "real" NFL game on tonight, and it's pretty cool to see the Titans in the old Houston Oilers gear. Maybe not so much for Houstonians, who still hate Bud Adams like we hate Mike Shanahan, but I always liked that Oilers franchise, particularly when I lived next door to Gary Brown during his 1000-yard season. The Oilers actually delivered his checks to our apartment, but my roommates and I faithfully delivered them to him each week. Too bad he didn't remember us when he cashed in with a big contract. In fact, in response to a question from the press regarding what he planned to do with his million dollar signing bonus, he replied, "Move." A note on tonight's game: reminding us all that Punters are football players, and therefore Ray Guy belongs in the Hall of Fame, the Oilers just pulled a pretty sweet fake punt that the punter ran 40 yards for a touchdown.

Anyway, back to Monte's list. Who is missing? The Tooz is a glaring omission. Alzado? I would put Eddie Anderson on my personal list.